The next morning, I woke to a soft knock at the front door.

I peeled myself off the sofa and rubbed my eyes. Nightmare —previously snuggled in the space between my legs and the sofa— admonished me with a sleepy meow. She wasn't the only one who was annoyed that our sleep had been disturbed.

My head pounded with the lack of sleep, and my eyes felt raw and gritty. I couldn't remember falling asleep, but I could remember seeing the grey haze of dawn before I did. I must have drifted off for a few hours at most.

Another knock, but this time I realised it wasn't the front door, it was the back.

I glanced out of the large sash window beside me. Book Boy was standing in my yard, at my kitchen door. I could just about make out his tall lean figure through the translucent film of the blind.

If I stayed impossibly still, maybe he wouldn't be able to see me, and I could pretend I wasn't in.

His calm voice sliced through the muffled silence, "Anna, I know you're there."

I called his bluff and stayed silent.

"I can see you through the blind." He sounded amused and, as I huffed and walked through to answer the door, I could have sworn I heard him chuckle.

I squinted as I pulled open the door, wrestling with it as the warped wood caught against the frame. It was grey outside ­—as usual— but the soft light still stung my weary eyes.

Book Boy filled my field of view. His hair was dishevelled as always but that was the only part of him that looked ruffled. His soft teal t-shirt hung off his wide shoulders, the fabric floppy and unwrinkled. The short sleeves exposed his toned arms and the v neck revealed a tantalising glimpse of his broad chest. One hand tucked casually into a pocket of his black jeans while another gripped an empty glass jar.

I felt my heart flutter with attraction. My walls hadn't yet gone up, and my mind was still sluggish from sleep. For the first time in a long time, I felt butterflies spark to life in his presence. They only lasted a second before my sense of reason awoke and crushed them. Stifling the sensation before they could truly take flight.

Briefly, Book Boy looked me over, a flash of a frown crossed his chiselled face. It wasn't there long before he held out the empty jar.

"We've ran out of coffee."

"And?" I asked as I admired how the thick swell of his bicep stretched the supple fabric of his top. The butterflies fought against their oppression.

"We'd like to borrow some of yours."

I scowled, but Nightmare didn't seem to hold any of my resentment as she circled his legs purring. She sounded like a Harley Davison. Her chest vibrating with a low recurring rumble. For a cat who always seemed so fearful of humans, she clearly had no issue with him.

Book Boy cleared his throat, pulling my attention away from the little black cat caressing herself against him. Little minx.

"If that's OK?" he asked.

I smirked at the uncertainty in his voice. There was something satisfying about hearing someone —otherwise so confident— suddenly nervous in my presence.

I leaned against the doorframe as I watched him standing patiently in front of me. The light autumn wind circling through the yard was playing with his hair. I crossed my arms across my chest to ward off the cold. He didn't flinch.

"Can't you just go to the corner shop?"

"They're not open yet."

"They must be. They open at nine."

He pressed his lips into a line, suppressing a smile. "Like I said, they're not open yet."

I pulled my phone from my jeans pocket and checked it. I glared at the digital digits.

"You woke me up at seven on a Sunday morning, just so you could ask for coffee?" I growled. It just seemed to amuse him more.

"Yes, is that bad?" The way he tilted his head made it seem like it was a genuine question.

I huffed and went to get the coffee out of the cupboard. An addict like me always had a stash hidden somewhere. It was one of the few things I always made sure I had in the cupboard. Food would always come second to coffee.

I turned to hand the spare jar to him, but he'd silently slipped past me. I gaped for a moment as I saw him wandering around my living room. He was the first person to cross the threshold in four years, yet that significant moment had just passed me by. Completely out of my control. A tingle of disconcertion ran through my body. Just as he'd caught me off guard when he found me looking at his book, he'd yet again found a way of slinking through my barriers. Silent and undetected, the same way he lived above me.

In my moment of disorientation, I cringed at what he'd be seeing. The sleep-crumpled sofa, the pile of awful magazines, the shrivelled peace lily on the hearth. It was a home of apathy. Dishes were left uncleaned, possessions were scattered and out of place, and living things eventually withered and died through lack of care.

"Sorry I woke you up, I'm not very good at keeping track of time," Book Boy said as he placed the empty jar on my coffee table with an air of nonchalance. He'd managed to find the one clear space amongst the muddle of empty glasses, magazines, and old mail.

With his hands free, he started scanning my bookshelves. Wide hands and nimble fingers tiptoed across the spines as if cataloguing them in his mind. Those shelves were one of the few places in this flat where someone could get a glimpse of the person I was before. Despite leaving all my possessions behind when I left, I'd come to realise that I could reinvent who I was, but I couldn't change what I liked.

When I first moved into the flat, I'd been greeted with a neat alcove sandwiched between the kitchen door and the imposing chimney breast. I'd told myself I'd put up a couple shelves and maybe fill them with some generic artwork. Over time my love of fiction and film had morphed that plan into the wall before me. As my collection grew, more shelves were added.

Now the once empty space was stuffed with books and DVDs. Some were cult classics, others were more obscure, but without fail they all had one thing in common. They all featured love of some kind. For all my walls and rules, underneath it all I was still a sucker for some romance.

As I scanned over the titles, I almost forgot Book Boy was in the room. Almost, someone who looked like him was never truly forgotten.

A fleeting smile crossed my face as I saw him there, pouring over the works in front of him. Emma and Callum would be having a heart attack if he was walking around their living room. I should be too, but the unnerving tingle running down my spine stopped me.

"Are you finished snooping?" I interrupted, purposefully using the term he'd used on me when he caught me looking in his book.

"You read a lot," he said, ignoring my irritated tone. "What's your favourite?"

My eyes tightened. My lack of sleep had left me more irritable than usual, but even if that wasn't the case, I wasn't one for small talk. Or talk of any kind outside of work.

He turned and looked at me. His face was open and questioning.

"I don't really have a favourite," I bit out. He was here now and from the way he was standing, he didn't have any intention of leaving right away. I resigned myself to humouring him as I did with Gina.

"There's not one you've read more than all the others? Or a film you always watch when you're hungover?" he asked the questions with a casual smile, but his eyes watched me intently.

I joined him by the shelves, scanning over the books and films packed onto them. The spines on each of the books were creased where I'd folded the book in my hands. The films didn't show the same wear and tear, but an observant person could see there were certain ones where the plastic on the cover was slightly more worn than others.

I pulled free a DVD and handed it to him with a smirk.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer?"

"Season six, episode seven. Once More with Feeling. It's a musical episode. Guaranteed to see me through a hangover, without fail," I explained. I was only three when the series ended, but I'd been one of many who had fallen in love with something beyond their time. Now the boxset was one of my few cherished possessions.

He turned the plastic case over in his hand with a small smile.

"I would not have had you down as a musical fan."

My eyebrow rose as I replied, "it's easy for people to surprise you when you don't know them."

"You're not the easiest person to get to know," he retorted, raising his own thick dark eyebrow.

He was teasing me, or that was probably his intention. Still, the undercurrent of his words sparked the itch under my skin. Like a match in a powder keg.

"Is that what this is all about?" I jabbed my finger towards the empty jar on the coffee table. "You just needed an excuse to come and snoop?"

He blinked at me, momentarily taken back by my sudden outcry. Intense blue eyes watched me with thick dark eyelashes. "No."

"You don't even drink coffee at the bar. Why would you suddenly be desperate for one now?" I pushed, the itch revelling in being released.

"I wasn't. I'm not." He paused as he composed himself. A large masculine hand passed through his hair, leaving a delectable mess of dark strands in its wake. "We don't know anyone else here. You're our neighbour. Is it so odd that we talk now and then?"

"People don't talk to their neighbours these days," I jeered as I tried to figure out his motives.

"Every rule has an exception, Anna."

His beguiling eyes tempered my anger, and I felt myself calm down. I couldn't find it in me to be mad at him. With a huff, I ran a hand through my hair and rolled my eyes. They felt stiff and puffy with the lack of sleep.

"Fine," I said with a brief, tight smile.

He returned it, bright and honest like the rare smile I saw on him now and then. "Good."

As if he'd gotten what he'd come for, he turned and left. He grabbed the jar of coffee seamlessly on his way out.

I rushed to follow him.

"You said you didn't even want the coffee!" I called, bereft, as he hopped over the fence that divided my yard from the metal stairs leading up to his flat.

"Call it a moving in gift," he replied with glee as he bounded gracefully up the steps and disappeared into his kitchen. I noticed how his footsteps barely echoed against the cast iron stairs.

I wandered back into my flat and leaned against the kitchen door as I shut it.

Nightmare blinked at me before padding back to her place on the sofa.

"Don't look at me like that, you little hussy," I cooed. She ignored me and took to preening herself in the dim sunlight.

I sifted through the whirlwind of what had just happened. With Book Boy I always felt like I was on the back foot. Still, maybe getting to know him wouldn't be a bad thing. At the very least maybe I could figure him out. I still couldn't shake the feeling that there was something off about him. I couldn't pinpoint what it was, but over the past few weeks the feeling stirring in my stomach had become more and more prominent.

Maybe removing myself from society had left me suspicious of people who took an interest in me, but there was part of me that felt like it was more than that. It was the black book he carried. The smile he had where it didn't reach his eyes. The endless hunger he possessed when he was near anything sweet. The impossible silence he existed in. And now, his sudden interest in getting to know someone after weeks of sitting alone, ignoring the world around him. There was definitely something strange about Book Boy.